Rapidly thawing Arctic permafrost and coastal erosion on the Beaufort Sea, Arctic Ocean, near Point Lonely, AK. Photo Taken in August, 2013
Power plants and automobiles burning fossil fuels and spewing carbon-dioxide play the starring role in the
unfolding saga of human-induced climate change. But a new study raises the possibility that tiny microbes gone wild in a melting Arctic emit a far more potent greenhouse gas that could tip the
scales even farther:
Now, a new study, published Tuesday in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, tackles the question of how rising temperatures can change the activity of microorganisms in the Arctic. The study focuses on methane production, rather than carbon dioxide — an important issue to understand because of methane’s potency.
Ice and snow reflect more sunlight that darker land and sea water. As the brighter ground cover melts revealing the darker surface, more sunlight is absorbed raising the local temperature and causing more melt. This process is called
Polar Amplification and researchers worry it has already begun a runaway positive feedback loop in the Arctic. Now consider dormant, methane-producing microbes in the frozen permafrost suddenly liberated from their icy prison, or nearby opportunistic ones ready and able to chow down on the remains of plants and animals that were locked up in the icy matrix.
That's potentially a big deal. Permafrost makes up a surprisingly large amount of Earth's land area. Methane is many, many times better at trapping heat than other GHGs like CO2. And, while its half life is relatively short in the atmosphere, it can break down into more greenhouse gasses. If these microbes survive and bloom in large quantities in the now thawed permafrost, they would accelerate the warming process, both locally and globally.